*
REPORT : 14
A
paper on the Community Development Fund, experiences of UCDO/CODI presented
at the UNCHS meeting in New York
1.
Introduction
An urban poor development fund is a powerful development mechanism,
allowing urban poor communities to organize themselves into saving groups
and improve their financial and managerial capacity to manage the loans
for community development activities for the members or for the community
as a whole from the fund directly. It is a mechanism that enables urban
poor organizations to tap development resources directly by building up
their own capacities. It is an alternative way of avoiding traditional
bureaucratic mechanisms which decide development activities on behalf
of communities. This new approach allows communities to decide and design
various development activities by themselves, on a large scale, and later
to link together into networks of learning and sharing of knowledge. The
networking has become another important development mechanism in the cities,
not only as a means of sharing knowledge but also of working together
with local development agencies, cooperating and planning for urban poor
community development as well as other local development activities, and
building better local partnerships.
The Urban Community Development Office, UCDO was set up in 1992 as an
organization in charge of managing the Urban Community Development Fund
of 1,250 Million Baht (US$ 28 million) granted by budget from the Thai
government. Before 1996, UCDO granted loans to community organizations
in a rather scattered way, by dealing directly with individual community
groups. Since 1996, the emergence of community networking has brought
a completely new dimension and development vision to the way UCDO operates.
Community networks and building up local partnerships to broaden community
development activities have become the leading new development directions.
While UCDO still supplied and actively supported communities with various
kinds of community development loans, UCDO also acted as facilitator for
larger city collaborative development activities.
As a result, when UCDO merged with the Rural Development Fund to become
CODI (Community Organizations Development Institute) in October 2000,
not only has the total amount of the Fund been increased by about 36%
from the original amount, but UCDO has been able to expand its development
activities to 53 out of Thailand's 75 provinces. About 950 community saving
groups and more than 100 community networks have been set up. And total
assets generated in Thai urban communities from the process could be roughly
calculated to be well beyond 2,000 million Baht, which generated partly
from the loans from this Community Development Fund and partly from community's
own savings and credit activities themselves.
Regarding housing activities, there are several kinds of housing projects
which have been developed through community initiatives, ranging from
initiatives to buy existing slum land to resettlement nearby or further
away from former community locations, and loans for housing improvement
in existing slums or housing repair after crises. Recently, when the community
network process became stronger, city-wide housing development activities
have been introduced in the cities of Nakornsawan, Ayuthaya, Uttaradit,
Chiangmai, etc. This is a new direction in which the community networks,
together with the city, develop and plan for security of tenure for all
existing slums in the city. Apart from housing, community environment
activities, community welfare and community enterprise activities have
also been actively developed. Some cities have shown great potential for
stronger community networks to link with other civic groups to work in
a broader city development issues like planning, environment, solid waste
management etc.
Furthermore, because of the close collaborations and learning from each
other among groups in different countries in Asia, facilitated by the
Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, the experience of UCDO has been widely
disseminated to several other countries in the region. Several countries
such as Cambodia, Laos PDR, Vietnam, India. South Africa and Zimbabwe
have learned about the powerful roles of community development funds and
have developed similar Community Fund in their countries.
In October 2000, UCDO was merged with the Rural Development Fund to become
CODI, to be able to work with a much broader scope, including urban and
rural areas and with a new legal but very flexible institutional status
as public organization.
2. Situation before 1996 and after
UCDO was set up in 1992 at a time of steady high economic growth
in the country since 1980s. In those years under the period of economic
growth, it was no surprise that the country achieved annual two digit
economic growth regularly. The growth has been the big long boom after
stronger democratic system has been secured since early 1980s allowing
economic development base on various forms of foreign investment to gradually
gain their weight. The country from this period transformed rapidly: private
sector development boomed, easy access to loans and finance for development
from commercial banks, so many huge infrastructure and building activities
developed throughout the country, greater expansion of urbanization to
most urban centers in the country, growth of middle class and service
sectors, private real estate housing sectors boomed, land prices sky-rocketed.
Despite such a boom and such rapid growth, income disparities between
rich and poor grew very wide. Income shares of first highest quintiles
has increased from 51% in early 80s to more than 60% in 1990s and the
shares from bottom quintiles has decreased from 5% to 3% in the same period.
This growth drew more people to come to cities for greater employment
opportunities in both formal and informal sectors. The urban poor people
also enjoyed greater employment opportunities contributed from the economic
growth. However, the fact that most urban poor communities usually have
weak land tenure security resulted in more eviction problems. Eviction
problems have been wide spread on both public and privately-owned land,
since economic growth and increasing land prices have both encouraged
and pressured landlords to redevelop land for more profitable uses. At
the end of 1980s, about 24% of Bangkok's population lived in about 1,500
low-income settlements and about 21% of those settlements reported to
have problems of eviction. In theory, all slum communities can be evicted
since there are no legal protections whatsoever, no matter how long the
settlements might have been established.
The general threat of eviction in most slum communities, on the other
hand, has become a major factor in bringing communities together into
organizations, to learn how to survive and negotiate and coordinate with
others, as well as searching for more secure development options. In early
1990s, before the setting up of UCDO, some innovative housing options
such as land-sharing, community-driven housing activities, the formation
of a few community networks and more and more numbers of community saving
and credit activities were initiated. These innovative initiatives were
organized against the lack of sufficient formal institutional support
and were still based on fairly conventional approaches. On the private
sector development side, which have immensely transformed the urban human
settlements context in Bangkok and several cities, the real estate housing
boom has, in general, not able to reach the 30% poorer population. The
real drive of the private sector's market housing boom has also been generated
by speculation and easily-accessible finance for the upper and middle
class, who mostly have the luxury of owning more than one house, mostly
2 to 3 if not more.
The problems from such unbalanced growth has brought the country to serious
consideration and to an attempt to review the development direction under
the 8th National Social Economic Plan (1997-2001) to concentrate more
on such unbalanced and disparity and to reorient the country's development
to focus more on people, social equity and sustainability. In fact, the
preparation process of the new approach in the national plan has started
to changed the development approach before 1996 to be more people and
community oriented, holistic approach, localization and to be more integrated.
This was the general situation until the first half of 1997, when the
severe Asian economic crisis hit the country hard, and which will take
a long time to recover from. The crisis has had a great impact on all
sectors of people in the country, especially the middle class. Many private
sectors and financial institutions collapsed, causing serious unemployment
and lesser incomes throughout.
The urban poor also faced serious problems. According to the survey on
impacts to the poor from a country-wide survey of about 130 communities
conducted 1998 by UCDO, it was found that 60% of the urban poor had less
income and increasing debts. Savings activities in many communities also
faced crises and near collapse.
However, eviction problems were reduced. Furthermore, the crisis, has
brought several other government programs that was able to use the crisis
to implement new development opportunities by communities in massive national
scale on various development activities. Furthermore, the crisis also
become a good hard cause bringing people in the whole country to rethink
and review all related structural development directions in the country
which bring about drastic structural change in political system, economic
development, city development, environment and sustainable development,
etc.,.
3.
The Approach adopted to address the problems
3.1
General approach/ development process
UCDO was set up in 1992 to manage Urban Community Development Fund
in response to bridge the large gap created between the formal system
and informal urban poor and it has been designed from the wealth of
experiences and potentials learnt from various initiations in the 80s.
It has developed various process by trial and error until around 1996
when the new thinking started to reform the way the Fund operated. Then
came the economic crisis in 1997 which affected communities and UCDO's
loans seriously causing UCDO to change the way it operated more drasticly
and to use the crisis to be an opportunity in changing into a new quality.
UCDO was set up as an attempt of the Thai Government to take a new approach
and develop a new process to address urban poverty. The Government granted
a revolving fund of 1,250 million Baht (about US$ 28 million) through
the National Housing Authority [1] to set up a special program and new
autonomous unit of Urban Community Development Office to address urban
poverty at national scale. The program sought to improve living conditions
and increase the organizational capacity of urban poor communities through
the promotion of community savings and credit groups and the provision
of integrated loans at favorable interest rates as wholesale loans to
community organizations. This new Urban Poor Development Fund was to
be accessible to all urban poor groups who organized themselves to apply
for loans for their development projects.
For the urban poor, organizing themselves into savings and credit group
is a simple, direct and uncomplicated way of taking care of their immediate
day-to-day needs. Savings activities become a tool which links poor
people within a community to find ways of working together, from handling
simple basic credit needs to managing more complex development activities
which help linking them with the formal system. Savings and credit groups
become a significant entry point for a community's own development process,
to come together as a community, and to link with external resources.
And the Urban Poor Development Fund is the communal resource base which
community people can link with directly to get additional resources
to develop themselves.
The idea, however, is not simply to provide low-interest loans to the
poor. Community savings and credit activities are seen as a means for
engendering a community's own holistic development, which should gradually
be able to deal with the root causes of poverty. Much more important
than cheap loans is the development of community managerial capacity
and stronger community organizations which are able to lead various
community development processes. It is therefore important that development
process include community action planning and the creation of partnerships
with other local development actors - especially the municipalities
- and to link up with various other local development activities. The
process of continuous learning and development within and between poor
communities must be the focal development mechanism to address problems
of poverty, mainly by the urban poor themselves, using the Urban Poor
Development Fund as their basic resource.
As regard to the system of loans, there are various kinds of loans offered
to community savings and credit groups throughout the country. All kinds
of loans are given as low interest, wholesale loans to community organizations
or community networks, allowing the organizations or networks to add
a margin to cover their expenses or other community development activities
or welfare programs. In general, the organizations will add certain
margins so the members will receive the loans at the rate that is near
to or slightly higher than the prevailing market rates, which, in any
case, are still much lower than those infomal money lending systems.
Various kinds of loans from the Fund offer various kinds of financial
resources for various development options to be implemented, decided
and controlled by community organizations themselves. The various kinds
of loans options are as follows:
| Types
of Loans |
Interest
charged (%) from UCDO/CODI |
Maximum
term |
| Revolving
Fund Loan |
10 |
3 |
| Income
Generation |
8 |
5 |
| Community
Enterprise |
4 |
7 |
| Housing
Improvement |
8-10 |
5-15 |
| Housing
Project |
3-8 |
15 |
| Network
Revolving Fund Loan |
4 |
5 |
| Revival
loan |
1 |
5 |
| (Miyazawa)
loan to relieve community crisis and debts |
1 |
5 |
| Guarantee
loan |
fixed
rate + 2% |
flexible
up to the need for guaranteeing |
| *Most
cases community will add margin of about 5% from this rate charged
by UCDO. |
3.2
Approaches adopted after 1996 and in confronting problems from economic
crisis
In early stages, loans were granted to community organizations
directly and widely. By 1997, the operating process of UCDO came to
a significant period of adjustment and structural change, which paved
the way for an immense change in urban community development process
in Thailand. The change mainly came from the creation of community networks
in same cities or constituencies. There are several reasons for this:
1.There has been more and more emphasis on city development processes
and on linking community groups with local authorities. Groups in the
same city who have similar experiences and have become more mature have
met more often at local authority development forums.
2.The UCDO process has been so scattered throughout the country that
there was a need to link communities to share and work together in their
constituencies, to be self supporting and use self learning among community
groups in the same area. It has also been important to utilize experiences
and capabilities of the strong groups to set up and support the new
and weaker groups.
3.Between 1997 and 1999, the problems of the economic crisis affected
the urban poor's savings and credit groups immensely. The non-repayment
rate increased from 1-2% in 1995 to about 7-8% in 1998-1999, and several
community savings and credit groups came to the verge of collapse. Therefore,
a new and clearer understanding of the process of setting up community-savings
groups and a new understanding of how to revive broken groups had to
be found and quickly learned from these problems. The whole system of
UCDO was totally reviewed. The fragility of the savings groups, without
sufficient and on-going horizontal support, was also clearly realized,
and there was a need to find a horizontal mechanism of communities and
other urban development actors to support. Besides, it is also extremely
important to find ways how to transfer the repayment responsibilities
to be a more communually responsible rather then single community responsibilities,
with probably just a few leaders taking responsibility. All this learning
and experience led UCDO to the new direction of bringing groups to work
and share responsibilities with each other in the form of networking.
4.Several interventions and programs made since 1996 have started to
implement the decisions and work of the networks, rather than single
groups, such as community-driven community development activities, community
welfare programs, etc. The new approach has proved to be extremely efficient
in implementing significant numbers of community development projects
by communities themselves, in city and country-scale. With this new
approach, it communities themselves can find connections and continuations
for those various development programs themselves. Later on, these network
processes were mobilized to deal with several other urban community
issues such as infrastructure, housing, community planning, education,
health and welfare.
4. Institutional set-up and roles of partners
4.1 Institutionalized partnership at highest policy level
Since its inception in 1992, UCDO was governed by a Board appointed
from various development partners, especially community representatives
elected by community themselves. To be a new kind of institution managed
by partnership of development as an institutionalized "Partnership".
The organization was governed by a Board which had complete power to
make decisions on all of the UCDO policies. Although UCDO was a special
organization under NHA, the UCDO Board had the power to make decisions
independently. The crucial point in this regard was the combination
of the Board Members which are as follows:
* 4 from government organizations (the Bank of Thailand, Finance Ministry,
National Housing Authority and NESDB),
* 4 elected from community leaders,
* 3 experts from NGOs and private sector.
* The NHA Governor is the Chairman and
* UCDO Managing Director is the Secretary of the Board.
Such a combination brought about a process of partnership in the implementation
of the programs. This new process brought in all of the relevant and
concerned actors, with partnership and cooperation as its core structure,
throughout the whole implementation process. The instant that community
leaders are having equal status with other government and development
actors have significant implications to the entire development process.
Having community representatives sitting at the highest committee also
directly caused the whole program to be transparent and participatory
at structural level.
When UCDO merged to become Community Organizations Development Institute
(CODI), a public organization, the same principles of the partnership
Board were taken as the new institutions structure.
4.2. Communities and community networks as key Operating Mechanisms
The organization used the strategy of strengthening communities'
managerial capacity as a major strategy, then tried to find a process
whereby the activities could be multiplied by the community organizations
themselves. So UCDO worked to encourage, facilitate and enable, in all
possible ways, various forms of community organizations and federations
to be set up or become involved in the program. Communities are key
implementators for all development activities through various loans
provided.
The very significant aspects is the process of linking together the
urban poor savings and credit groups in the same city and district,
or with similar development issues and common interests to form many
different community networks. Networks were also organized at various
levels - from national, regional, within-city, zonal and district-wise
or organized according to similar interest and problems such as network
on same loandlords, eviction, community enterprise, welfare, etc.,.
In fact, no particular format about community network have been prescribed,
but the networks have developed according to the interest and capabilities
of the groups involved, in accordance to their own needs, situation
and changing context.
Community networking are very powerful platform for larger scale development
- a platform which involves a synergy of learning, sharing of experiences,
boosting of morale and inspiring each other. The networks have given
urban poor groups enormous confidence. Community networking has emerged
at many levels and in many forms, and has become the main community-led
development mechanism to develop a national-scale urban poverty development
process and to link with other existing programs by the urban poor community
themselves. Later, loans also provide to community networks as well.
4.3 Working with other Existing Organizations
Another major UCDO strategy was to work with as many as existing
organizations as possible : Government, Local Authorities, NGOs, Federations,
professionals etc., and regards all existing organizations as potential
development partners, to be supported and strengthened and to work together
in implementing the program. In several cities, attempts to bring all
urban groups to work together in the form of Urban Community Development
Committee were successfully introduced. Building capacity to build local
partnership to work together through UCDO interventions has been in
regular ways of implementation. Subcontracting development activities
to NGOs and municipal governments in several cities have also been implemented.
5. Financial resources
The Community Development Fund was granted from the Thai Government in
1992 in the amount of 1,250 million baht (about US$ 28 million). It is
a revolving fund which provides flexible, low-interest loans to communities.
The fact that the grant was in the form of a revolving fund allowed greater
flexibility in managing a new development process which is being led by
people in communities. The new management of a fund allowed short-cuts
to deliver financial resources directly to communities and to be directly
managed by communities. It was a new way to liberate communities and urban
poor people from the existing restrictions of conventional, expensive
and development, decided for them by others who are not poor.
From the very beginning, it was agreed that profit earned on the fund
should help subsidize the administrative and development costs in all
activities. It was agreed, politically, from the Board that the average
interest rate should be around 7% from all kinds of loans. The share expenses
for this 7% was divided as follows: 4% for administration and development
activity costs, 1 % reserved for bad loans, 1% for special community activities
and 1% go back to the Fund.
In reality, the actual average interest gains from all loans was only
about 5%, since about 60% of total loans granted were for housing projects
which pay a low interest rate of only 3%. However, since only about one
third of the total fund was being used in various kinds of loans, while
two thirds was saved in the bank, that allowed for higher interest rates,
especially before 1998-1999. Therefore the interest gained from the Fund
averaged about 7% per year, while total expenses for all the development
activities and management costs averaged about 3% per year. Therefore,
when UCDO merged to become CODI at the end of 2000, the UCDO fund had
grown in size to about 1,700 Million Baht (US$ 38 million).
Apart from activities developed around community savings and credit process
generated by the Community Development Fund, when so many community activities
and networks emerged and began working actively with other local development
actors on a large scale, this development process also began to draw resources
from several other development budgets to incorporate in general development
activities. Since 1996, there have been several joint-development projects
between UCDO and other development programs such as DANCED's Community
Environment Development Activities, which received the grant to set up
urban Community Environment Development Fund of about US$ 1.3 million.
Community welfare activities, as well, got a boost from the World Bank's
Social Investment Program of about US$ 6 million.
6. Results and impacts
6.1 Increases in community organizations and networks
At the time of the creation of CODI in October 2000, not only has
the total amount of the fund increased by 36% from the original grant,
but UCDO has been able to expand its activities into 53 provinces (out
of 75) throughout the country. About 950 community saving groups, out
of about 2,000 total urban communities, and more than 100 community
networks have been set up. Besides, there are various kinds of community
networks sharing the same interest or same problems across the country,
such as network on community on same land, community enterprise, womens
groups, etc. Community networks have also been accepted as an important
development mechanism by most formal development agencies now.
6.2 Increased in community assets and direct financial resources
More than 1,000 million baht have been granted as various kinds
of loans and more than half of the loans have been repaid. On the communities'
side, by setting up saving groups, the amount of community savings,
when put together, is now more than 500 million baht. These community-owned
savings are used as fast-revolving funds which circulate among community
members. Roughly calculated, the assets generated within communities
as a result of this savings and loan process could be around 2,000 million
baht, during UCDO's period of operation, while the original capital
in the fund still remains, revolved and has in fact increased. In 1999-2000,
the implementation of Miyazawa loans to community networks, for purposes
of relieving the effects of the economic crisis in poor communities,
found that about half of the 240 million baht which was granted to refund
the informal debts of members, which could also amounts to more than
500 million baht in 5 years.
6.3 Increased community management and enterprising capacity
Having their own resource base, linkages with several other groups,
and back-up from UCDO as a part of government organization, communities
have developed the confidence to implement activities which directly
address their own insecure conditions, by themselves. With a stronger
financial base and a strong confidence in their own development capacity,
several communities have been able to develop community enterprises
and to invest together in many activities. Several groups have subcontracted
the work together as a group such as construction work, producing of
school uniforms from Municipality, such the ownership and management
of petrol stations by taxi driver cooperatives. Taxi drivers can own
their own cars from income generation loans, communities can subcontract
the management of a large fresh market as a group and communities can
own a milk factory together, etc.
6.4 Developing more diverse housing solutions - from individual
projects to city processes
Several kinds of housing projects have been developed through loans
to community initiatives, including buying existing slum land, resettling
to land that is close to former communities, improving housing in situ
in existing slums and repairing housing after a crisis. Recently, as
the community network process became stronger, several city-wide housing
development activities have been introduced in the cities of Nakornsawan,
Ayuthaya, Uttaradit and Chiangmai. This is a breakthrough, and an exciting
new direction, in which local community networks work together with
the city to develop city-wide plans for providing secure land and housing
for all the existing slums in the city. Some cities have great potential
for stronger links to be forged between community networks, local government
agencies and other civic groups to work on broader city development
issues like planning, environment, solid waste management and in broader
city development program such as Healthy or Livable Cities Program.
6.5 Development of large scale community welfare activities
Most of the community networks have developed their own community
welfare programs to take care of the more vulnerable groups in their
own communities. These welfare programs have been completely designed
and carried out by the networks, and include funds for school fees,
funds for people who are sick, funds for the elderly, and funds for
emergencies within communities. In fact, the existence of these welfare
funds allows communities to help each other in such a way that isolated
problems become a communal shared responsibilities. They also provide
a secure feeling among community members who have never had any sort
of welfare protection in the past.
6.6 Communities have stronger status and can develop better partnerships
with local authorities and other development actors
Several cities have developed urban community development forums
as a collaborative platform for communities and other development actors
working together at city level. Many formal development programs have
also developed structures of partnership, with community representatives
sitting at the highest committee level. It is becoming more and more
a culture and belief that communities of the poor should be key development
actors and should participate in the decisions which relate to their
lives.
6.7 Changing the culture of how development institutions are managed
Most development institutions - whether local, national or international
- always preach about decentralization, and participation. But the way
they set up their institutional systems and the way they plan, administer
and implement their programs is mostly in complete contradiction to
that preaching. This new approach has helped demonstrate new development
possibilities, in which communities are prime actors and it has given
much broader and more sustainable impacts. The process demonstrate the
strength and power of horizontal development direction against the traditional
unsustainable and expensive vertical system.
7. Replication, follow-up, CODI
7.1 Expanding the experiences of CDF to other countries in the region
Because of the close collaboration and mutual learning among groups
in different countries in Asia, as facilitated by the Asian Coalition
for Housing Rights, the experience of UCDO has been widely disseminated
to several other countries in the region. Several countries such as
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, South Africa have been able to learn
about the powerful roles which can be played by community development
funds. Many of these groups in other countries have developed similar
models in their countries and there are now many funds operating in
Asia and Africa, such as the Urban Poor Development Fund (UPDF) in Phnom
Penh, the Pak Ngum Community Development Fund in Vientiane, Community
Development Funds in 5 provincial cities in Vietnam, the Payatas Urban
Poor Development Fund in the Philippines, the uTshani Fund in South
Africa, the Windhoek Urban Poor Development Fund in Namibia and the
Gungano Fund in Zimbabwe. Extensive exchange visits among several groups
in the region have been organized to facilitate and broaden the development
of this direction.
7.2 Institutionalizing links between urban and rural community development
On October 26, 2000, UCDO officially merged with a Rural Development
Fund to become a new public organization called The Community Organizations
Development Institute (CODI). The royal decree which brought CODI into
existence allows development activities launched under UCDO to continue,
but the change also provide a new opportunity for a some big changes
in how the organization works, how it relates to the poor community
organizations it supports. The decree means CODI itself has its own
legal entity as public organization to provide larger scope, greater
possibilities, greater flexibility, broader linkages and much-expanded
possibilities for collaboration between urban and rural groups. CODI
can also apply for government budget directly so the additional financial
resources will become additional development tools of communities.
The transformation to CODI has brought about drastic changes to the
former UCDO's structure, which has become much more decentralized to
the regions in the country. Each region will have a committee comprising
community leaders and other development actors to direct the development
in that region. In each province, as well, there will be provincial
development committees selected from various community networks in the
province to lead the province's development direction.
8. Lessons learned
8.1 community savings and credit activities and Community Development
Fund should be viewed as powerful means for self development process
Community-managed savings and credit is a flexible but powerful
instrument for development by people themselves - not as an end or objective
in itself. This implies an approach to development not as mere welfare,
not only to provide access to finance but a process to build a real
community strength and development force from within. The Communit Development
Fund is set up to support development by communities directly, and allows
this "self development" to gradually mature and strengthen,
so communities can renegotiate with other sectors in society. If such
funds are properly managed, they can generate various kinds of increased
wealth and prosperity within communities, while the capital remians
or increases.
8.2 The management of Community Funds or poverty programs should
be designed on the basis of conditions of the poor - not on the basis
of what is convenient for market or bureaucratic purposes.
Most programs are set up to match the conditions and knowledge
of non-poor people from the formal system. Many funds tend to worry
too much about market mechanisms and conditions, even though these things
may not relate to the lives of the poor very much. Some feel too worried
about the poor behavior and lack of formal knowledge in community leaders.
Too much efforts have been wrongly concentrate on training how to formalize
communities with formal knowledge that strange to their lives and ways
of living which always end up with little success. Effective programs
should concentrate on the conditions and potentials of the poor. The
establishment of these funds allow greater flexibility to allow the
poor to be the key development actors and learn to better develop thrie
lives and community by their increasing capacity and knowledge base
on their own survival potentials and at their own pace. These funds
will allow financial flow to be secured for various kinds of development
by the poor, through their community organizations themselves.
8.3 It is important to deal with poverty issues with deeper understanding
Poverty results from causes that are structural. In order to deal
with poverty problems, it is necessary to develop ways in which the
poor themselves can become stronger and have more confidence to change
and develop by themselves as much as possible. The development may have
to be multi-dimentional and continuous. The strength of change developed
from within the poor and in relationship to others has to coincide.
The stronger the poor become in their confidence, financial status,
learning, information, bargaining power and links, the better they become
in changing their relationship with the system gradually by themselves.
Poverty cannot be reduced by any single program or consultancy. It needs
serious ground work with - and by - the poor people themselves.
8.4 Partnership in very important but real partnership is difficult
and need gradual development
The new institutional set up based on a process of partnership
between various actors is a very important and, perhaps, inevitable
development direction, however, it can be a rather problematic process.
Many existing urban actors, government municipality, NGOs or CBOs emerged
from a past culture of confrontative and centralized politics which
runs counter to the spirit of a process of partnership and decentralization:
the new approach and process has to deal with and work along with this
reality. A real partnership is a process to evolve a more equitable
political relationship of communities and other urban actors which will
have to take time to develop. Needless to say this new process can be
easily be obstructed or side tracked by actors with the old mind set.
8.5 Internal institutional development to keep up with actual development
realities
It is important to build a development process, within the administrating
organization, that corresponds to a "bottom-up" community
development process: a new type of administrative culture is required
to allow and encourage a maturity and strength in development workers
that grows along with the community. A failure to carefully build a
facilitating, institutional system with a people-centered philosophy
and paradigm will obstruct or bring about the failure of the actual
development process. Organizational development needs to be emerged
in both ways and all directions, complementary and changing each others
: from the institution to community and also from community to institution,
from communities to communities and from institutions to institutions.
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